Web 2.i crave attention

The trend I see with the successful web2.0 sites is that it all seems to be a way to allow for people to try and stick out of the crowd by doing the same thing. I may be being cynical but Facebook, on its surface, is a way to keep in touch with your friends. If you look at everyday usage though, it’s uploading pictures, updating statuses, poking, whatever. Users there are basically saying: “look at me, look at my status, isn’t it funny?  I crave your attention.”

Digg, the social networking bookmark site, is a way of alerting other users of interesting and/or funny news, pictures or movies. It does this quite well. Every now and again you find articles or comments about Digg users complaining that their self written articles or submitted articles do not do that well on Digg. It all seems to be about status for the users. It seems to be a way of saying: “Look at me. Look at what I have dugg. Recognise me for finding this cool link that I have in no way had anything to with but wish to take some credit for. I crave your attention.”

Twitter does not even pretend to be anything else other than a tool for attention whores. At its heart is says “Look at me, look at my fucking breakfast, here is a photo, please reply to my inane tweets about my overly mundane life so that you may provide the feedback that I so desperately need to know if my life actually means something. I crave your attention.”

I am not even going to bother with myspace. Everyone knows it’s for attention whores. If you don’t know this, you are either in a band or a natural born attention whore. The two are not mutually exclusive.

To twitter’s credit I did see some use in it the other day. Gmail went down I was not sure if they company I was working for had suddenly blocked it or if it was actually down. In my experience it would have been the first time a google service was not available. A quick search on twitter revealed that gmail was infact down and people all over the world were reporting this in. So for any major events in the developed world and the more advanced developing worlds it makes a good world pulse. And it if it wasn’t for attention whoredness of the site in question having a world pulse would not be possible.

I supposed that I am angry because the more I use these sites, it seems the more I seem to rely on others for validation of my actions. This angers me. Never in my life have I ever done this. Never in my life have I cared what others thought. I have always strived to be the best I can be in my own eyes. While doing that I was capable of selfless acts or creating things that others appreciated. Never the other way round. I always tried to operate unseen. Doing my thing (and doing it well) from the shadows without anyone noticing or even knowing who did it. Only to step out of the shadows to prevent others from taking recognition for work that is not their own.

That’s enough I think.